What would happen if he simply waited and did nothing now? Kita summoned what little imaginative powers remained to him, and tried to think.
He’d spent too much effort in fruitless resistance of one sort or another, that was the trouble. That’s why he’d been left hanging onto life like this. Enough. No more resisting. He was as good as through the door into the other world, after all, so why not simply accept whatever may happen now? Everything except meddling from other people, that was. Luckily, there was no sign of a soul around here. Still, you never knew when some curious hiker might come striding along, or someone out after wild herbs, so he’d be better off hiding deeper in the forest. He should look for some sheltered spot out of the rain, make himself enough space to lie down, and gather some wild coltsfoot leaves for a roof. This would be his grave. If he stuck it out for two weeks or so, surely he’d manage to turn into a mummy as he lay there.
It took him half a day to climb the narrow mountain track, cross a stream, push his way through thickets of dwarf bamboo, and walk around till he found a suitable gravesite, a cave between two great rocks. He set about stamping down the dwarf bamboo on the floor, then he laid down the coltsfoot leaves he’d picked along the way, and plugged the gaps in the walls with wet clay. By the time he’d made himself the kind of den where a bear would happily settle in to hibernate, the woods were growing dark. He’d worked hard.
It was quite a pleasant coffin to lie in. The coltsfoot and bamboo blanket kept up a constant rustle, but they held the warmth. Strangely free of hunger, he slept deeply. The silence of the forest at night was so complete that his ears rang and his heart beat loudly, but the soft rustle of the bamboo leaves helped calm his fears.
He dreamed of eating curry. With each mouthful he found more curry on the plate, till it had grown to a small mountain before his eyes, which spilled over and engulfed him.
When he woke, he was seized with a fierce thirst and a desire to vomit. He struggled out of his coffin and made his way through the dwarf bamboo in search of the stream. It seemed he’d be making this thirty-minute trip there and back every day from now on. The nausea subsided once he’d drunk, but it was now replaced by fierce stomach cramps. At last, around noon, he managed to shit.
The nausea and headache were a little better while the sun was shining, but as soon as night came on the darkness clamped painfully around his stomach and his head. There seemed to be a kind of tidal rhythm to the pain.
As he lay there in the darkness, he felt the boundary between life and death grow blurred. His body would eventually return to the soil, but he felt that his consciousness too was shifting, and growing more intimate with the earth. The only problem was, the suffering got in the way.
You’re still alive. The pain is the proof of it.
He decided to pick up a small stone every time he went for water, and make a pile in front of his grave.
He was growing more sensitive to pain and fear. The enemy was obviously urging him to become increasingly aware of approaching death. Well then, he’d make himself insensitive, he decided. But though he managed to do this to some extent, time stretched out and drove him mad. It was easiest to sleep, but he was terrified of being seized by insomnia when night came, so he lay there with his eyes open while it was light, looking at the trees and shrubs and clouds, and listening to the sounds of the forest. There was a shrub nearby that, like a trompe l’oeil, became now a plump woman’s face, now a malicious-looking rabbit face, now the backside of a squatting sumo wrestler. And then there were the endless, meaningful whisperings of the forest.
Groaning, he rolled about in his rock shelter, sweating profusely, his stomach stabbed by fierce pains like a sword piercing his guts. It was literally a battle with death. Even if he admitted defeat and surrendered, though, his merciless ordeal would continue. Why such pains in his stomach, when he’d eaten nothing? He’d had no idea until this moment just what suffering was involved in not eating. It seemed he had chosen the very opposite of an easy death.
Not only his stomach but his head was wracked with pain, and now the pains cycled more and more swiftly through him. Almost like the pangs of childbirth. There was pain in the birth of new life and the relinquishing of old life alike.
Even when the agony weakened a little, he now knew to anticipate the cycle, and was braced against its next onslaught. Then, just a little later than he’d anticipated, fresh pain would surge through him.
Today, it took twice as long to make his way down to drink water and return. He had all the time in the world, but how much longer would his strength hold? When all that was left was his bones, time would still flow gently along in the stream and forest.
His cheeks were sunken, his trousers were loose on his frame. The loss of flesh meant that the cold penetrated more fiercely. He sought out the sunlight as much as he could, and lay curled in it.
It was terrible not to sleep at night. The darkness and the silence doubled his suffering. The only tiny salvation was in the soft burr of the crickets. It sounded in his ears like music, like song. Then a cicada began, its rhythmic rasping call seeming to say “eat and sleep, eat and sleep,” or “life or death, life or death.”
For the insects, what lay here was a huge and marvellous lump of potential prey. They must be gathering round to check him out. After all, it would be their job to return him to the earth.
Rain fell. He settled his head so that his open mouth could catch the drops, and lay there for a while. This allowed him to forego the exhausting business of making his way down to the stream and back.
The rain brought a faint scent of herbs. Forest tea, he thought as he drank. He feverishly counted the drops that entered his mouth – a total of 5,411.
It must be poor circulation that made him feel so cold. But his body was frail now, and walking was a huge effort. His legs in particular felt terribly weak. Once he could no longer go for water, death would no doubt come quite swiftly.
He began to suffer fierce palpitations. His heart was racing uncontrollably, pumping blood around the body, desperately trying to keep his body temperature up. Kita was doing his best to die, but his heart was bravely trying to keep him alive. This pain that flowed into every corner of his body must be his organs and nerves rising up in protest at his death. But he was by now less than half alive.
His skin was parched, and flaking off in raised scales. Smelly pus oozed from the wound in his forehead.
Hey, worms, be glad and rejoice! You’ll soon be served a lovely big lump of meat jerky.
The pebbles he piled up one by one even on the days he didn’t go for a drink had now reached more than twenty. By now, his body no longer responded to orders. And yet he wanted water.
The torment went on, in a blur of day and night. He managed to piss a tiny trickle of urine once a day, but each time with more pain.
He thought perhaps an escape into the world of dreams would lessen the suffering a little, but the dreams were never pleasant. He was tired of dreaming. He wanted to become a figure in someone else’s dream for a change. That way he’d feel neither pain nor cold, even if he were beaten, abused, even killed.
This was horrible. All he was doing was not eating, so why should he be suffering such pain and cold?
Christ underwent a fast of forty days in the wilderness in his thirtieth year. Buddha attained enlightenment after a forty-day fast, and Moses was given the Ten Commandments after fasting forty days. So all the great religious founders had undergone this horrible suffering. They must have had exceptional powers of endurance. More than likely, though, these saints were either extreme masochists, or people with an exceptional physical make-up.
He hadn’t had the slightest intention of getting pally with the saints, or of understanding how they’d felt. He’d only wanted to die a light-hearted death. If he’d realized what a cruel ordeal those men had been through, he’d have bowed in heartfelt reverence before both God and the Buddha.
The saintly hermits of old would have tas
ted the extremes of loneliness, hallucination, and suffering as they underwent their experiences of life and death, light and dark, good and evil, freedom and restraint. Those fierce oppositions would have registered along their nerves as aching head, aching stomach, cold, nausea, paralysis, dream, hallucination, and fear. Half dead, their thoughts came with the half-life left to them. They saw no one, ate nothing, made no attempt to escape or hide; they relinquished the self, and existed simply in this in-between state. The unbearable pain of fasting would have driven them again and again to almost yield to the temptation to flee to either life or death. Life up till now wasn’t all that bad, they’d have thought. Now that I’ve withstood all this suffering, the old life will feel wonderfully easy after this. They may have felt that it was better after all to resign yourself to the constraints of normal life rather than endure this brutal freedom. Or maybe they felt more inclined to give up trying to think with the life that remained to them, and instead simply hasten their death.
Yet they resisted. They stood firm in this limbo state, learned the art of enduring the cruel extremes of freedom, and in the end walked back among the people again. No doubt what awaited them there were misunderstandings and oppression by the authorities. No one would be able to think like them, or have the strength to endure as they had. They had nothing more to fear. It was the people and the authorities that now feared them.
And he had mistakenly entered that same limbo, where misunderstanding, persuasion, discrimination, and persecution meant nothing.
Having understood so late in the day, Kita felt the urge to pray to something. He had defiled holy ground, and he feared that still crueller torments awaited him. And now, for the first time since chasing himself into this forest, he felt that it would be better to escape.
This was the worst day so far. Pain stabbed at him constantly, and he was assailed by a nausea so strong it threatened to turn his guts inside out. Twisting his now useless body about he struggled to endure, lost consciousness when the pain became too great, regained it again to continue his suffering.
He had forfeited all chance of escape now. In a few more days he’d surely be dead.
Rain fell, and for the first time in three days water touched his mouth. The clouds were bringing water for the dying.
If he had a phone handy, he’d like to get onto the god of death and say Quick, kill me! I’m waiting!
He wasn’t fasting. No, it’s just that there wasn’t any food, nor any appetite. The thought made him want to laugh. Food has escaped me. And there’s no way I can escape.
He no longer knew whether he felt pain, or cold, or indeed anything.
He’d grown very thin and light. Shrivelled as a slice of dried squid. Put him over a flame and he’d curl.
Water, he wanted water. Once the messenger of death came for him, he’d be taken to the River Styx. Then he could drink his fill.
Rain. He’d thought he’d be dead by morning, but there was still some life in him after all. Lots of rain today. He’d drunk a bit too much. Pissing was painful. Once he’d managed to piss, his body was attacked by sharp pains like being packed in needles of ice. Maybe he’d die of cold before he died of starvation.
If only the forest would burst into flames, he prayed. It would release him from this cold, and give him a cremation.
A beautiful day. Same pain, but less excruciating if he stopped focusing on it. Come what may, he’d try going for water today he decided. His legs had completely given in by now, but he could roll down the slope, and crawling was still possible. But he wouldn’t be able to get back to the cave, would he? He didn’t have the strength to make himself a new bed sheltered from the rain and wind. Well, he was nine tenths dead by now, so what did it matter? He could choose to stay in this coffin till he shrivelled to a mummy, or return to earth somewhere out there among the dwarf bamboo, or set off to meet the River Styx halfway – at any rate, he’d die faster by moving.
So out he crawled. OK, he thought, let’s see if I can walk. He tried standing with the support of the rock face. His legs no longer had anything to do with him. His will set off to walk, but his legs refused to do as they were told. He staggered three steps, his body carried unwillingly along above the tottering legs, then collapsed.
He tried again and again, crawling along on all fours in short bursts, but he’d only gone barely thirty yards from the cave when his strength gave out.
He rolled over and looked at the sky. The clouds were laughing. Ah, he thought with a sigh, how stupid I’ve been to struggle, and he made his way back to the cave with the same repetition of crawl and stagger. He’d finally given in now. It was just that it was such a beautiful day he couldn’t bear to stay still.
He’d now become part of this nameless forest.
His cells were cannibalizing each other, it seemed to him. The law of strong eats weak was being displayed right here in his own body. And cannibalism hurt.
Still being dismembered? Not over yet?
He really should have drowned. Compared to starvation, all those other deaths – drowning, hanging, electrocution, falling off a cliff, poisoning, shock – were just a roller-coaster ride.
Still not dead? Oh come on, stop joking.
I’ll be there soon. Just have to cut the thread.
Even after all this, still dreaming. Still a bit left in the battery, eh? The doctor was serving in a convenience store, and he complained when Kita turned up to buy a packet of instant curry.
“I’m supposed to get your organs when you die, you know.” Good God, he was still on about that. Forget the organs, just remove the pain in here, will you?
He really should be dead by now, but the pain was still there.
What’s that? A helicopter? Has a war begun, maybe?
Hey, looks like someone’s out there. Come to fetch me across the river at last, is that it?
Nausea. Come on, spew me out onto the far shore for God’s sake.
Where am I? Still in limbo, it seems…
What is "Death by Choice"?
How are you?
I’m so-so, myself. Bored, as usual. One life cycle completed and into extra time, pottering about in my tiny patch of garden like an Englishman intent on finding his pleasures among the mediocrities of existence, tending cucumbers and scallions, and cutting lengths of bamboo from the local grove to make little bamboo trinkets. Younger friends remark that age seems to be catching up with me these days, and I guess it’s true, I’ve reached that time of life. And now, in my dotage, I’ve come up with this kind of desperate novel, in which I’ve given myself free rein to portray a decadence in keeping with this fin de siècle moment, and preparations for what’s to come. Those who read this book will be a step ahead of everyone else by getting a sneak preview of life and opinions at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Actually, I have to say I’ve already published quite a few novels that accurately predicted the future. I flatter myself that I haven’t just done what a journalist does, tagging along in the wake of alarming events with an analysis of their social pathologies – I’ve been consistently aware of historical trends, and tried to grasp what lies beneath the superficial currents of the age. You could call me the last canary that’s taken into the coal mine. But the canary is rather like the boy who cried wolf. I love that boy, and I never could believe he was lying. I choose to think that he was simply more highly-strung and sensitive than anyone else in the village.
You don’t have to be a depressive – everyone who’s lived twenty or thirty years has once or twice felt the seductive urge towards suicide. My own thoughts have turned that way repeatedly ever since adolescence. I’ve managed to survive thanks to the fact that I was never really all that serious about it, but I know you don’t necessarily need some strong motivation or hell of despair for suicide. Other people, the ones left behind, assume that you must have been driven to it by some dreadful anguish, but the person who dies doesn’t consider it in such complicated terms. This is the case w
ith Zombie (alias Izumi Mizusawa) in the novel. On the contrary, I’d guess that if you were in a state of mind that allowed you to pause and really think about why you needed to kill yourself, there’d be a pretty good chance you’d give up on the idea.
We can’t pop over to the other world and ask the people who’ve committed suicide about this, so their real motives for suicide must remain a mystery. Actually, there may well be such complex reasons and motivations behind the act that even they themselves aren’t aware of them. You can’t find all the factors behind a suicide in the personal consciousness and situation of the person involved. It’s perfectly possible to have suicides produced by social situations, or being swept along by mass psychology, or even resulting from fashion. Think of the people who kill themselves as a sacrifice to some popular idol, or as a result of the Internet circulating suicide manuals or offering cyanide for sale.
I don’t feel any urge to recreate some outmoded suicide manual from a passing fad. I don’t see anything wrong with the existence of manuals like this – they’re pretty much like those for conducting love affairs, or cooking, or wandering the world. The important thing is to find out whether things really happen the way they say they do in these manuals. After all, that kind of advice is just simplified generalization. Even if people follow precedent exactly, the process and the result will differ completely from one person to the next. I’m a novelist, so all I can do is doggedly pursue the tale of one suicide.
After adolescence, the period that is most closely connected with suicide is one’s forties, when it’s the leading cause of death. This has some relevance to me, since I’ve only got a couple of years to go before I turn forty. So I feel the need to work through the question of suicide till I’ve grown sick of the subject, in order to get my head around how to deal with my coming middle-aged male crisis. This impulse is what lies behind Death by Choice, a detailed look at the last week in the life of a man who’s decided to kill himself the following Friday.
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